Facilities to be long time coming

THE peak body for more than 24 community associations across the Sunshine Coast region, said residents frustrated by long trip times, lack of parking and being forced to plan a trip to the shops to avoid congestion needed to understand what the future held.

If it concerned them, they needed to take notice of the planning being forced on the region now and have their voices heard, OSCAR’s Johanne Wright said.

She said given Queensland’s long-term track record, essential services would come well behind the population wave.

Even when the buildings to house those services were in place, there would then be a need for the appropriately skilled people to deliver them.

Mrs Wright said there was already a gap between demand for ambulance services and the capacity to meet it and a desperately needed new hospital would not be delivered for some time.

She said everyone was aware of the costs of the growth push being encouraged by the Bligh government.

“They are never actually put on the table and accounted for,” she said. “The government doesn’t acknowledge them. But where are the benefits?”

She said the government’s state of the region report was a hidden document because of the growth costs it exposes.